[C] 3d September, the anniversary of his greatest victories.
I am fond of gardening. I like to dig. If among the operations of the garden any need for such a work can be at any time discovered or invented, I like to dig a hole. On the third of March, 1848, I began a hole behind the kitchen wall, whereinto it was originally intended to transplant a plum-tree. The exercise was so much to my taste, that a strange humor impelled me to dig on. A fascination held me to the task. I neglected my business. I disappeared from the earth's surface. A boy who worked a basket by means of a rope and pulley, aided me; so aided, I confined my whole attention to spade labor. The centripetal force seemed to have made me its especial victim. I dug on until autumn. In the beginning of November I observed that, upon percussion, the sound given by the floor of my pit was resonant. I did not intermit my labor, urged as I was by a mysterious instinct downward. On applying my ear, I occasionally heard a subdued sort of rattle, which caused me to form a theory that the centre of the earth might be composed of mucus. In November, the ground broke beneath me into a hollow and I fell a considerable distance. I alighted on the box-seat of a four-horse coach, which happened to be running at that time immediately underneath. The coachman took no notice whatever of my sudden arrival by his side. He was so completely muffled up, that I could observe only the skillful way in which he manipulated reins and whip. The horses were yellow. I had seen no more than this, when the guard's horn blew, and presently we pulled up at an inn. A waiter came out, and appeared to collect four bags from the passengers inside the coach. He then came round to me.
"Dine here, sir?"
"Yes, certainly," said I. I like to dine—not the sole point of resemblance between myself and the great Johnson.
"Trouble you for your stomach, sir."
While the waiter was looking up with a polite stare into my puzzled face, my neighbor, the coachman, put one hand within his outer coat, as if to feel for money in his waistcoat-pocket. Directly afterward his fingers come again to light, and pulled forth an enormous sack. Notwithstanding that is was abnormally enlarged, I knew by observation of its form and texture that this was a stomach, with the œsophagus attached. This, then, the waiter caught as it was thrown down to him, and hung it carelessly over his arm, together with the four smaller bags (which I now knew to be also stomachs) collected from the passengers within the coach. I started up, and as I happened to look round, observed a skeleton face upon the shoulders of a gentleman who sat immediately behind my back. My own features were noticed at the same time by the guard, who now came forward, touching his hat.
"Beg your pardon, sir, but you've been and done it."
"Done what?"
"Why, sir, you should have booked your place, and not come up in this clandestine way. However, you've been and done it!"
"My good man, what have I done?"
"Why, sir, the Baron Terroro's eyes had the box-seat, and I strongly suspect you've been and sat upon them."
I looked involuntarily to see whether I had been sitting upon any thing except the simple cushion. Truly enough, there was an eye, which I had crushed and flattened.
"Only one," I said.
"Worse for you, and better for him. The other eye had time to escape, and it will know you again, that's certain. Well, it's no business of mine. Of course you've no appetite now for dinner? Better pay your fare, sir. To the Green Hippopotamus and Spectacles, where we put up, it's ten-and-six."
"Is there room inside?" I inquired. It was advisable to shrink from observation.
"Yes, sir. The inside passengers are mostly skeleton. There's room for three, sir. Inside, one-pound-one."
I paid the money, and became an inside passenger.
Professor Essig's Lectures on Anatomy had so fortified me, that I did not shrink from entering the Skitzton coach. It contained living limbs, loose or attached to skeletons in other respects bare, except that they were clothed with broadcloth garments, cut after the English fashion. One passenger only had a complete face of flesh, he had also one living hand; the other hand I guessed was bony, because it was concealed in a glove obviously padded. By observing the fit of his clothes, I came to a conclusion that this gentleman was stuffed throughout; that all his limbs, except the head and hand, were artificial. Two pairs of Legs, in woolen stockings, and a pair of Ears, were in a corner of the coach, and in another corner there were nineteen or twenty Scalps.
I thought it well to look astonished at nothing, and, having pointed in a careless manner to the scalps, asked what might be their destination? The person with the Face and Hand replied to me; and although evidently himself a gentleman, he addressed me with a tone of unconcealed respect.
"They are going to Skitzton, sir, to the hair dresser's."
"Yes, to be sure," I said. "They are to make Natural Skin Wigs. I might have known."
"I beg your pardon, sir. There is a ball to-morrow night at Culmsey. But the gentry do not like to employ village barbers, and therefore many of the better class of people send their hair to Skitzton, and receive it back by the return coach, properly cut and curled."
"Oh," said I. "Ah! Oh, indeed!"
"Dinners, gentlemen!" said a voice at the window, and the waiter handed in four stomachs, now tolerably well filled. Each passenger received his property, and pulling open his chest with as much composure as if he were unbuttoning his waistcoat, restored his stomach, with a dinner in it, to the right position. Then the reckonings were paid, and the coach started.
I thought of my garden, and much wished that somebody could throw Professor Essig down the hole that I had dug. A few things were to be met with in Skitzland which would rather puzzle him. They puzzled me; but I took refuge in silence, and so fortified, protected my ignorance from an exposure.
"You are going to Court, sir, I presume?" said my Face and Hand friend, after a short pause. His was the only mouth in the coach, excepting mine, so that he was the only passenger able to enter into conversation.
"My dear sir," I replied, "let me be frank with you. I have arrived here unexpectedly out of another world. Of the manners and customs, nay, of the very nature of the people who inhabit this country, I know nothing. For any information you can give me, I shall be very grateful."
My friend smiled incredulity, and said,
"Whatever you are pleased to profess, I will believe. What you are pleased to feign a wish for, I am proud to furnish. In Skitzland, the inhabitants, until they come of age, retain that illustrious appearance which you have been so fortunate as never to have lost. During the night of his twenty-first birthday, each Skitzlander loses the limbs which up to that period have received from him no care, no education. Of those neglected parts the skeletons alone remain, but all those organs which he has employed sufficiently continue unimpaired. I, for example, devoted to the study of the law, forgot all occupation but to think, to use my senses, and to write. I rarely used my legs, and therefore Nature has deprived me of them."
"But," I observed, "it seems that in Skitzland you are able to take yourselves to pieces."
"No one has that power, sir, more largely than yourself. What organs we have we can detach on any service. When dispersed, a simple force of Nature directs all corresponding members whither to fly that they may re-assemble."
"If they can fly," I asked, "why are they sent in coaches? There were a pair of eyes on the box seat."
"Simply for safety against accidents. Eyes flying alone are likely to be seized by birds, and incur many dangers. They are sent, therefore, usually under protection, like any other valuable parcel."
"Do many accidents occur?"
"Very few. For mutual protection, and also because a single member is often all that has been left existing of a fellow Skitzlander, our laws, as you, sir, know much better than myself, estimate the destruction of any part absent on duty from its skeleton as a crime equivalent to murder—"
After this I held my tongue. Presently my friend again inquired whether I was going up to Court?
"Why should I go to Court?"
"Oh, sir, it pleases you to be facetious. You must be aware that any Skitzlander who has been left by nature in possession of every limb, sits in the Assembly of the Perfect, or the Upper House, and receives many state emoluments and dignities."
"Are there many members of that Upper Assembly?"
"Sir, there were forty-two. But if you are now traveling to claim your seat, the number will be raised to forty-three."
"The Baron Terroro—" I hinted.
"My brother, sir. His eyes are on the box-seat under my care. Undoubtedly he is a member of the Upper House."
I was now anxious to get out of the coach as soon as possible. My wish was fulfilled after the next pause. One eye, followed by six pairs of arms, with strong hard hands belonging to them, flew in at the window. I was collared; the door was opened, and all hands were at work to drag me out and away. The twelve hands wisked me through the air, while the one eye sailed before us, like an old bird, leader of the flight.
What sort of sky have they in Skitzland? Our earth overarches them, and, as the sunlight filters through, it causes a subdued illumination with very pure rays. Skitzland is situated nearly in the centre of our globe, it hangs there like a shrunken kernel in the middle of a nutshell. The height from Skitzland to the over-arching canopy is great; so great, that if I had not fallen personally from above the firmament, I should have considered it to be a blue sky similar to ours. At night it is quite dark; but during the day there is an appearance in the heaven of white spots; their glistening reminded me of stars. I noticed them as I was being conveyed to prison by the strong arms of justice, for it was by a detachment of members from the Skitzton police that I was now hurried along. The air was very warm, and corroborated the common observation of an increase of heat as you get into the pith of our planet. The theory of central fire, however, is, you perceive, quite overturned by my experience.
We alighted near the outskirts of a large and busy town. Through its streets I was dragged publicly, much stared at and much staring. The street life was one busy nightmare of disjointed limbs. Professor Essig, could he have been dragged through Skitzton, would have delivered his farewell lecture upon his return. "Gentlemen—Fuit Ilium, Fuit Ischium, Fuit Sacrum, anatomy has lost her seat among the sciences. My occupation's gone." Professor Owen's book "On the Nature of Limbs," must contain, in the next edition, an Appendix "Upon Limbs in Skitzland." I was dragged through the streets, and all that I saw there, in the present age of little faith, I dare not tell you. I was dragged through the streets to prison, and there duly chained, after having been subjected to the scrutiny of about fifty couples of eyes drawn up in a line within the prison door. I was chained in a dark cell, a cell so dark that I could very faintly perceive the figure of some being who was my companion. Whether this individual had ears wherewith to hear, and mouth wherewith to answer me, I could not see, but at a venture I addressed him. My thirst for information was unconquerable; I began, therefore, immediately with a question:
"Friend, what are those stars which we see shining in the sky at mid-day?"
An awful groan being an unsatisfactory reply, I asked again.
"Man, do not mock at misery. You will yourself be one of them."
"The teachers shall shine like stars in the firmament." I had a propensity for teaching, but was puzzled to discover how I could give so practical an illustration of the text of Fichte.
"Believe me," I said, "I am strangely ignorant. Explain yourself."
He answered with a hollow voice:
"Murderers are shot up out of mortars into the sky, and stick there. Those white, glistening specks, they are their skeletons."
Justice is prompt in Skitland. I was tried incredibly fast by a jury of twelve men, who had absolutely heads. The judges had nothing but brain, mouth, and ear. Three powerful tongues defended me, but as they were not suffered to talk nonsense, they had little to say. The whole case was too clear to be talked into cloudiness. Baron Terroro, in person, deposed that he had sent his eyes to see a friend at Culmsey, and that they were returning on the Skitzton coach, when I, illegally, came with my whole bulk upon the box-seat, which he occupied. That one of his eyes was, in that manner, totally destroyed, but that the other eye, having escaped, identified me, and brought to his brain intelligence of the calamity which had befallen. He deposed further, that having received this information, he dispatched his uncrushed eye with arms from the police-office, and accompanied with several members of the detective force to capture the offender, and to procure the full proofs of my crime. A sub-inspector of Skitzton police then deposed that he sent three of his faculties, with his mouth, eye, and ear, to meet the coach. That the driver, consisting only of a stomach and hands, had been unable to observe what passed. That the guard, on the contrary, had taxed me with my deed, that he had seen me rise from my seat upon the murdered eye, and that he had heard me make confession of my guilt. The guard was brought next into court, and told his tale. Then I was called upon for my defense. If a man wearing a cloth coat and trowsers, and talking excellent English, were to plead at the Old Bailey that he had broken into some citizen's premises accidentally by falling from the moon, his tale would be received in London as mine was in Skitzton. I was severely reprimanded for my levity, and ordered to be silent. The judge summed up, and the jury found me guilty. The judge, who had put on the black cap before the verdict was pronounced, held out no hope of mercy, and straightway sentenced me to death, according to the laws and usage of the realm.
The period which intervenes between the sentence and execution of a criminal in Skitzland, is not longer than three hours. In order to increase the terror of death by contrast, the condemned man is suffered to taste at the table of life from which he is banished, the most luscious viands. All the attainable enjoyment that his wit can ask for, he is allowed to have, during the three hours before he is shot like rubbish off the fields of Skitzland.
Under guard, of course, I was now to be led whithersoever I desired.
Several churches were open. They never are all shut in Skitzton. I was taken into one. A man with heart and life was preaching. People with hearts were in some pews; people with brains, in others; people with ears only, in some. In a neighboring church, there was a popular preacher, a skeleton with life. His congregation was a crowd of ears, and nothing more.
There was a day-performance at the Opera I went to that. Fine lungs and mouths possessed the stage, and afterward there was a great bewilderment with legs. I was surprised to notice that many of the most beautiful ladies were carried in and out, and lifted about like dolls. My guides sneered at my pretense of ignorance, when I asked why this was. But they were bound to please me in all practicable ways, so they informed me, although somewhat pettishly. It seems that in Skitzland, ladies who possess and have cultivated only their good looks, lose at the age of twenty-one all other endowments. So they become literally dolls, but dolls of a superior kind; for they can not only open and shut their eyes, but also sigh; wag slowly with their heads, and sometimes take a pocket handkerchief out of a bag, and drop it. But as their limbs are powerless, they have to be lifted and dragged about after the fashion that excited my astonishment.
I said then, "Let me see the poor." They took me to a Workhouse. The men, there, were all yellow; and they wore a dress which looked as though it were composed of asphalte; it also had a smell like that of pitch. I asked for explanation of these things.
A Superintendent of Police remarked that I was losing opportunities of real enjoyment for the idle purpose of persisting in my fable of having dropped down from the sky. However, I compelled him to explain to me what was the reason of these things. The information I obtained was briefly this: that Nature, in Skitzland, never removes the stomach. Every man has to feed himself; and the necessity for finding food, joined to the necessity for buying clothes, is a mainspring whereby the whole clockwork of civilized life is kept in motion. Now, if a man positively can not feed and clothe himself, he becomes a pauper. He then goes to the Workhouse, where he has his stomach filled with a cement. That stopping lasts a life-time, and he thereafter needs no food. His body, however, becomes yellow by the superfluity of bile. The yellow-boy, which is the Skitzland epithet for pauper, is at the same time provided with a suit of clothes. The clothes are of a material so tough that they can be worn unrepaired for more than eighty years. The pauper is now freed from care, but were he in this state cast loose upon society, since he has not that stimulus to labor which excites industry in other men, he would become an element of danger in the state. Nature no longer compelling him to work, the law compels him. The remainder of his life is forfeit to the uses of his country. He labors at the workhouse, costing nothing more than the expense of lodging, after the first inconsiderable outlay for cement wherewith to plug his stomach, and for the one suit of apparel.
When we came out of the workhouse, all the bells in the town were tolling. The superintendent told me that I had sadly frittered away time, for I had now no more than half an hour to live. Upon that I leaned my back against a post, and asked him to prepare me for my part in the impending ceremony by giving me a little information on the subject of executions.
I found that it was usual for a man to be executed with great ceremony upon the spot whereon his crime had been committed. That in case of rebellions or tumults in the provinces, when large numbers were not unfrequently condemned to death, the sentence of the law was carried out in the chief towns of the disturbed districts. That large numbers of people were thus sometimes discharged from a single market-place, and that the repeated strokes appeared to shake, or crack, or pierce in some degree that portion of the sky toward which the artillery had been directed. I here at once saw that I had discovered the true cause of earthquakes and volcanoes; and this shows how great light may be thrown upon theories concerning the hidden constitution of this earth, by going more deeply into the matter of it than had been done by any one before I dug my hole. Our volcanoes, it is now proved, are situated over the market-places of various provincial towns in Skitzland. When a revolution happens, the rebels are shot up—discharged from mortars by means of an explosive material evidently far more powerful than our gun-powder or gun-cotton; and they are pulverized by the friction in grinding their way through the earth. How simple and easy truth appears, when we have once arrived at it.
The sound of muffled drums approached us, and a long procession turned the corner of a street. I was placed in the middle of it—Baron Terroro by my side. All then began to float so rapidly away, that I was nearly left alone, when forty arms came back and collared me. It was considered to be a proof of my refractory disposition, that I would make no use of my innate power, of flight. I was therefore dragged in this procession swiftly through the air, drums playing, fifes lamenting.
We alighted on the spot where I had fallen, and the hole through which I had come I saw above me. It was very small, but the light from above shining more vividly through it made it look, with its rough edges, like a crumpled moon. A quantity of some explosive liquid was poured into a large mortar, which had been erected (under the eye of Baron Terroro) exactly where my misfortune happened. I was then thrust in, the baron ramming me down, and pounding with a long stock or pestle upon my head in a noticeably vicious manner. The baron then cried "Fire!" and as I shot out, in the midst of a blaze, I saw him looking upward.
By great good fortune, they had planted their artillery so well, that I was fired up through my hole again, and alighted in my own garden, just a little singed. My first thought was to run to an adjoining bed of vegetable marrows. Thirty vegetable marrows and two pumpkins I rained down to astonish the Skitzlanders, and I fervently hope that one of them may have knocked out the remaining eye of my vindictive enemy, the baron. I then went into the pantry, and obtained a basket full of eggs, and having rained these down upon the Skitzlanders, I left them.
It was after breakfast when I went down to Skitzland, and I came back while the dinner bell was ringing.
Perhaps the event that lingers longest in the memory, among all the appalling episodes and startling passages of the French Revolution, is the assassination of the tyrant Marat, by Charlotte Corday. With the blood of old Corneille running in her veins, and possessing something of his stern and masculine love of liberty, this simple child of nature hears in her distant home that her friends, the Girondists, are proscribed, and that a hated triumvirate in Paris, tramples on the feelings and liberties of the people. Full of one idea, she purchases a knife, and, without a single confidant, sets out for the metropolis, where, procuring an interview with Marat, she stabs him to the heart, and with one blow accomplishes her revenge, and what she vainly supposed to be the people's redemption.
In Miss Julia Kavanagh's charming volumes she gives us a pretty faithful memoir of this extraordinary woman. Among the women of the French Revolution, there is one, says the gifted authoress, who stands essentially apart: a solitary episode of the eventful story. She appears for a moment, performs a deed—heroic as to the intention, criminal as to the means—and disappears forever; lost in the shadow of time—an unfathomed mystery.
The greatest portion of the youth of Charlotte Corday—to give her the name by which she is generally known—was spent in the calm obscurity of her convent solitude. Many high visions, many burning dreams and lofty aspirations, already haunted her imaginative and enthusiastic mind, as she slowly paced the silent cloisters, or rested, lost in thought, beneath the shadow of the ancient elms. It is said that, like Madame Roland, she contemplated secluding herself for ever from the world in her monastic retreat; but, affected by the skepticism of the age, which penetrated even beyond convent walls, she gave up the project....
All the austerity and republican enthusiasm of her illustrious ancestor, Pierre Corneille, seemed to have come down to his young descendant. Even Rousseau and Raynal, the apostles of democracy, had no pages that could absorb her so deeply as those of ancient history, with its stirring deeds and immortal recollections. Often, like Manon Philipon in the recess of her father's workshop, might Charlotte Corday be seen in her convent cell, thoughtfully bending over an open volume of Plutarch, that powerful and eloquent historian of all heroic sacrifices.
When the Abbaye aux Dames was closed, in consequence of the Revolution, Charlotte was in her twentieth year, in the prime of life, and of wonderful beauty; and never, perhaps, did a vision of more dazzling loveliness step forth from beneath the dark convent portal into the light of the free and open world. She was rather tall, but admirably proportioned, with a figure full of native grace and dignity: her hands, arms, and shoulders were models of pure sculptural beauty. An expression of singular gentleness and serenity characterized her fair, oval countenance and regular features. Her open forehead, dark and well-arched eyebrows, and eyes of a gray so deep that it was often mistaken for blue, added to her natural grave and meditative appearance; her nose was straight and well formed, her mouth serious but exquisitely beautiful.
On leaving the convent in which she had been educated, Charlotte Corday went to reside with her aunt, Madame Coutellier de Bretteville Gouville, an old royalist lady, who inhabited an ancient-looking house in one of the principal streets of Caën. There the young girl, who had inherited a little property, spent several years, chiefly engaged in watching the progress of the Revolution.
A silent reserve characterized this epoch of Charlotte Corday's life; her enthusiasm was not external but inward; she listened to the discussions which were carried on around her without taking a part in them herself. She seemed to feel instinctively that great thoughts are always better nursed in the heart's solitude: that they can only lose their native depth and intensity by being revealed too freely before the indifferent gaze of the world. Those with whom she then occasionally conversed took little heed of the substance of her discourse, and could remember nothing of it when she afterward became celebrated; but all recollected well her voice, and spoke with strange enthusiasm of its pure, silvery sound.
The fall of the Girondists, on the 31st of May, first suggested to Charlotte Corday the possibility of giving an active shape to her hitherto passive feelings. She watched with intense, though still silent interest, the progress of events, concealing her secret indignation and thoughts of vengeance under her habitually calm aspect. Those feelings were heightened in her soul by the presence of the fugitive Girondists, who had found a refuge in Caën, and were urging the Normans to raise an army to march on Paris. She found a pretense to call upon Barbaroux, then with his friends at the Intendance. She came twice, accompanied by an old servant, and protected by her own modest dignity. Péthion saw her in the hall, where she was waiting for the handsome Girondist, and observed with a smile, "So the beautiful aristocrat is come to see republicans." "Citizen Péthion," she replied, "you now judge me without knowing me, but a time will come when you shall learn who I am." With Barbaroux, Charlotte chiefly conversed of the imprisoned Girondists; of Madame Roland and Marat. The name of this man had long haunted her with a mingled feeling of dread and horror. To Marat she ascribed the proscription of the Girondists, the woes of the Republic, and on him she resolved to avenge her ill-fated country. Charlotte was not aware that Marat was but the tool of Danton and Robespierre. "If such actions could be counseled," afterward said Barbaroux, "it is not Marat whom we would have advised her to strike."
While this deadly thought was daily strengthening itself in Charlotte's mind, she received several offers of marriage. She declined them, on the plea of wishing to remain free: but strange indeed must have seemed to her, at that moment, those proposals of earthly love. One of those whom her beauty had enamored, M. de Franquelin, a young volunteer in the cause of the Girondists, died of grief on learning her fate; his last request was, that her portrait, and a few letters he had formerly received from her, might be buried with him in his grave.
For several days after her last interview with Barbaroux, Charlotte brooded silently over her great thought; often meditating on the history of Judith. Her aunt subsequently remembered that, on entering her room one morning, she found an old Bible open on her bed: the verse in which it is recorded that "the Lord had gifted Judith with a special beauty and fairness," for the deliverance of Israel, was underlined with a pencil.
On another occasion Madame de Bretteville found her niece weeping alone; she inquired into the cause of her tears. "They flow," replied Charlotte, "for the misfortunes of my country." Heroic and devoted as she was, she then also wept, perchance, over her own youth and beauty, so soon to be sacrificed forever. No personal considerations altered her resolve: she procured a passport, provided herself with money, and paid a farewell visit to her father, to inform him that, considering the unsettled condition of France, she thought it best to retire to England. He approved of her intention, and bade her adieu. On returning to Caën, Charlotte told the same tale to Madame de Bretteville, left a secret provision for an old nurse, and distributed the little property she possessed among her friends.
It was on the morning of the 9th of July, 1793, that she left the house of her aunt, without trusting herself with a last farewell. Her most earnest wish was, when her deed should have been accomplished, to perish, wholly unknown, by the hands of an infuriated multitude. The woman who could contemplate such a fate, and calmly devote herself to it, without one selfish thought of future renown, had indeed the heroic soul of a martyr.
Her journey to Paris was marked by no other event than the unwelcome attentions of some Jacobins with whom she traveled. One of them, struck by her modest and gentle beauty, made her a very serious proposal of marriage: she playfully evaded his request, but promised that he should learn who and what she was at some future period. On entering Paris, she proceeded immediately to the Hotel de la Providence, Rue ties Vieux Augustins, not far from Marat's dwelling. Here she rested for two days before calling on her intended victim. Nothing can mark more forcibly the singular calmness of her mind: she felt no hurry to accomplish the deed for which she had journeyed so far, and over which she had meditated so deeply: her soul remained serene and undaunted to the last. The room which she occupied, and which has often been pointed out to inquiring strangers, was a dark and wretched attic, into which light scarcely ever penetrated. There she read again the volume of Plutarch she had brought with her—unwilling to part from her favorite author, even in her last hours—and probably composed that energetic address to the people which was found upon her after her apprehension.
Charlotte perceived that to call on Marat was the only means by which she might accomplish her purpose. She did so on the morning of the 13th of July, having first purchased a knife in the Palais Royal, and written him a note, in which she requested an interview. She was refused admittance. She then wrote him a second note, more pressing than the first, and in which she represented herself as persecuted for the cause of freedom. Without waiting to see what effect this note might produce, she called again at half-past seven the same evening.
Marat then resided in the Rue des Cordeliers, in a gloomy-looking house, which has since been demolished. His constant fears of assassination were shared by those around him; the porter seeing a strange woman pass by his lodge, without pausing to make any inquiry, ran out and called her back. She did not heed his remonstrance, but swiftly ascended the old stone staircase, until she had reached the door of Marat's apartment. It was cautiously opened by Albertine, a woman with whom Marat cohabited, and who passed for his wife. Recognizing the same young and handsome girl who had already called on her husband, and animated, perhaps by a feeling of jealous mistrust, Albertine refused to admit her; Charlotte insisted with great earnestness. The sound of their altercation reached Marat: he immediately ordered his wife to admit the stranger, whom he recognized as the author of the two letters he had received in the course of the day. Albertine obeyed reluctantly; she allowed Charlotte to enter; and after crossing with her an ante chamber, where she had been occupied with a man named Laurent Basse in folding some numbers of the "Ami du Peuple," she ushered her through two other rooms, until they came to a narrow closet where Marat was then in a bath. He gave a look at Charlotte, and ordered his wife to leave them alone: she complied, but allowed the door of the closet to remain half open, and kept within call.
According to his usual custom, Marat wore a soiled handkerchief bound round his head, increasing his natural hideousness. A coarse covering was thrown across the bath; a board, likewise, placed transversely, supported his papers. Laying down his pen, he asked Charlotte the purport of her visit. The closet was so narrow that she touched the bath near which she stood. She gazed on him with ill-disguised horror and disgust, but answered as composedly as she could, that she had come from Caën, in order to give him correct intelligence concerning the proceedings of the Girondists there. He listened, questioned her eagerly, wrote down the names of the Girondists, then added, with a smile of triumph: "Before a week they shall have perished on the guillotine." "These words," afterward said Charlotte, "sealed his fate." Drawing from beneath the handkerchief which covered her bosom the knife she had kept there all along, she plunged it to the hilt in Marat's heart. He gave one loud, expiring cry for help, and sank back dead, in the bath. By an instinctive impulse, Charlotte had instantly drawn out the knife from the breast of her victim, but she did not strike again; casting it down at his feet, she left the closet, and sat down in the neighboring room, thoughtfully passing her hand across her brow: her task was done.
The wife of Marat had rushed to his aid on hearing his cry for help. Laurent Basse, seeing that all was over, turned round toward Charlotte, and, with a blow of a chair, felled her to the floor; while the infuriated Albertine trampled her under her feet. The tumult aroused the other tenants of the house; the alarm spread, and a crowd gathered in the apartment, who learned with stupor that Marat, the Friend of the People, had been murdered. Deeper still was their wonder when they gazed on the murderess. She stood there before them with still disordered garments, and her disheveled hair, loosely bound by a broad green ribbon falling around her; but so calm, so serenely lovely, that those who most abhorred her crime gazed on her with involuntary admiration. "Was she then so beautiful?" was the question addressed, many years afterward, to an old man, one of the few remaining witnesses of this scene. "Beautiful!" he echoed, enthusiastically; adding, with the eternal regrets of old age: "Ay, there are none such now!"
On the morning of the 17th, she was led before her judges. She was dressed with care, and had never looked more lovely. Her bearing was so imposing and dignified, that the spectators and the judges seemed to stand arraigned before her. She interrupted the first witness, by declaring that it was she who had killed Marat. "Who inspired you with so much hatred against him?" asked the President.
"I needed not the hatred of others, I had enough of my own," she energetically replied; "besides, we do not execute well that which we have not ourselves conceived."
"What, then, did you hate in Marat?"
"His crimes."
"Do you think that you have assassinated all the Marats?"
"No; but now that he is dead, the rest may fear."
She answered other questions with equal firmness and laconism. Her project, she declared, had been formed since the 31st of May. "She had killed one man to save a hundred thousand She was a republican long before the Revolution, and had never failed in energy."
"What do you understand by energy?" asked the President.
"That feeling," she replied, "which induces us to east aside selfish considerations, and sacrifice ourselves for our country."
Fouquier Tinville here observed, alluding to the sure blow she had given, that she must be well practiced in crime. "The monster takes me for an assassin!" she exclaimed, in a tone thrilling with indignation. This closed the debates, and her defender rose. It was not Doulcet de Pontécoulant—who had not received her letter—but Chauveau de la Garde, chosen by the President. Charlotte gave him an anxious look, as though she feared he might seek to save her at the expense of honor. He spoke, and she perceived that her apprehensions were unfounded. Without excusing her crime, or attributing it to insanity, he pleaded for the fervor of her conviction; which he had the courage to call sublime. The appeal proved unavailing. Charlotte Corday was condemned. Without deigning to answer the President, who asked her if she had aught to object to the penalty of death being carried out against her, she rose, and walking up to her defender, thanked him gracefully. "These gentlemen," said she, pointing to the judges, "have just informed me that the whole of my property is confiscated. I owe something in the prison: as a proof of my friendship and esteem, I request you to pay this little debt."
On returning to the conciergerie, she found an artist, named Hauër, waiting for her, to finish her portrait, which he had begun at the tribunal. They conversed freely together, until the executioner, carrying the red chemise destined for assassins, and the scissors with which he was to cut her hair off, made his appearance. "What, so soon!" exclaimed Charlotte Corday, slightly turning pale; but rallying her courage, she resumed her composure, and presented a look of her hair to M. Hauër, as the only reward in her power to offer. A priest came to offer her his ministry. She thanked him and the persons by whom he had been sent, but declined his spiritual aid. The executioner cut her hair, bound her hands, and threw the red chemise over her. M. Hauër was struck with the almost unearthly loveliness which the crimson hue of this garment imparted to the ill-fated maiden. "This toilet of death, though performed by rude hands, leads to immortality," said Charlotte, with a smile.
A heavy storm broke forth as the car of the condemned left the conciergerie for the Place de la Revolution. An immense crowd lined every street through which Charlotte Corday passed. Hootings and execrations at first rose on her path; but as her pure and serene beauty dawned on the multitude, as the exquisite loveliness of her countenance and the sculptural beauty of her figure became more fully revealed, pity and admiration superseded every other feeling. Her bearing was so admirably calm and dignified, as to rouse sympathy in the breasts of those who detested not only her crime, but the cause for which it had been committed. Many men of every party took off their hats and bowed as the cart passed before them. Among those who waited its approach, was a young German, normed Adam Luz, who stood at the entrance of the Rue Saint Honoré, and followed Charlotte to the scaffold. He gazed on the lovely and heroic maiden with all the enthusiasm of his imaginative race. A love, unexampled perhaps in the history of the human heart, took possession of his soul.
Unconscious of the passionate love she had awakened, Charlotte now stood near the guillotine. She turned pale on first beholding it, but soon resumed her serenity. A deep blush suffused her face when the executioner removed the handkerchief that covered her neck and shoulders, but she calmly laid her head upon the block. The executioner touched a spring and the ax came down. One of Samson's assistants immediately stepped forward, and holding up the lifeless head to the gaze of the crowd, struck it on either cheek. The brutal act only excited a feeling of horror; and it is said that—as though even in death her indignant spirit protested against this outrage—an angry and crimson flush passed over the features of Charlotte Corday.
In England every body notices the weather, and talks about the weather, and suffers by the weather, yet very few of us know any thing about it. The changes of our climate have given us a constant and an insatiable national disease—consumption; the density of our winter fog has gained an European celebrity; while the general haziness of our atmosphere induces an Italian or an American to doubt whether we are ever indulged with a real blue sky. "Good day" has become the national salutation; umbrellas, water-proof clothes, and cough mixtures are almost necessities of English life; yet, despite these daily and hourly proofs of the importance of the weather to each and all of us, it is only within the last ten years that any effectual steps have been taken in England to watch the weather and the proximate elements which regulate its course and variations.
Yet, in those ten years positive wonders have been done, and good hope established that a continuance of patient inquiry will be rewarded by still further discoveries. To take a single result, it may be mentioned, that a careful study of the thermometer has shown that a descent of the temperature of London from forty-five to thirty-two degrees, generally kills about 300 persons. They may not all die in the very week when the loss of warmth takes place, but the number of deaths is found to increase to that extent over the previous average within a short period after the change. The fall of temperature, in truth, kills them as certainly as a well-aimed cannon-shot. Our changing climate, or deficient food and shelter, has prepared them for the final stroke, but they actually die at last of the weather.
Before 1838, several European states, less apt than ourselves to talk about the weather, had taken it up as a study, and had made various contributions to the general knowledge of the subject; but in that year England began to act. The officials who now and then emerge from the Admiralty under the title of the "Board of Visitors," to see what is in progress at the Greenwich Observatory, were reminded by Mr. Airy, the astronomer royal, that much good might be done by pursuing a course of magnetic and meteorological observations. The officials "listened and believed."
The following year saw a wooden fence pushed out behind the Observatory walls, in the direction of Blackheath, and soon afterward a few low-roofed, unpainted, wooden buildings were dotted over the inclosure. These structures are small enough and humble enough to outward view, yet they contain some most beautifully-constructed instruments, and have been the scene of a series of observations and discoveries of the greatest interest and value. The stray holiday visitor to Greenwich Park, who feels tempted to look over the wooden paling, sees only a series of deal sheds, upon a rough grass-plat; a mast some eighty feet high, steadied by ropes, and having a lantern at the top, and a windlass below; and if he looks closer, he perceives a small inner inclosure, surrounded by a dwarf fence; an upright stand, with a movable top, sheltering a collection of thermometers; and here and there a pile of planks and unused partitioning, that helps to give the place an appearance of temporary expediency, an aspect something between a collection of emigrants' cottages and the yard of a dealer in second-hand building materials. But—as was said when speaking of the Astronomical Observatory—Greenwich is a practical place, and not one prepared for show. Science, like virtue, does not require a palace for a dwelling-place. In this collection of deal houses, during the last ten years, Nature has been constantly watched, and interrogated with the zeal and patience which alone can glean a knowledge of her secrets. And the results of those watches, kept at all hours, and in all weathers, are curious in the extreme; but before we ask what they are, let us cross the barrier, and see with what tools the weather-students work.
The main building is built in the form of a cross, with its chief front to the magnetic north. It is formed of wood, all iron and other metals being carefully excluded; for its purpose is to contain three large magnets, which have to be isolated from all influence likely to interfere with their truthful action. In three arms of the cross these magnets are suspended by bands of unwrought, untwisted silk. In the fourth arm is a sort of double window, filled with apparatus for receiving the electricity collected at the top of the mast which stands close by. Thus, in this wooden shed, we find one portion devoted to; electricity—to the detection and registry of the stray lightning of the atmosphere—and the other three to a set of instruments that feel the influence and register the variations of the magnetic changes in the conditions of the air. "True as the needle to the pole," is the burden of an old song, which now shows how little our forefathers knew about this same needle, which, in truth, has a much steadier character than it deserves. Let all who still have faith in the legend go to the magnet-house, and when they have seen the vagaries there displayed, they will have but a poor idea of Mr. Charles Dibdin's sea-heroes, whose constancy is declared to have been as true as their compasses were to the north.
Upon entering the magnet-house, the first object that attracts attention are the jars to which the electricity is brought down. The fluid is collected, as just stated, by a conductor running from the top of the mast outside. In order that not the slightest portion may be lost in its progress down, a lamp is kept constantly burning near the top of the pole, the light of which keeps warm and dry a body of glass that cuts off all communication between the conductor and the machinery which supports it. Another light, for the purpose of collecting the electricity by its flame, is placed above the top of the pole. This light, burning at night, has given rise to many a strange supposition in the neighborhood. It is too high up to be serviceable as a lantern to those below. Besides, who walks in Greenwich Park after the gates are closed? It can light only the birds or the deer. "Then, surely," says another popular legend, "it is to guide the ships on the river, when on their way up at night; a sort of landmark to tell where-abouts the Observatory is when the moon and stars are clouded, and refuse to show where their watchers are."
All these speculations are idle, for the lights burn when the sun is shining, as well as at night; and the object of the lower one is that no trace of moisture, and no approach of cold, shall give the electricity a chance of slipping down the mast, or the ropes, to the earth, but shall leave it no way of escape from the wise men below, who want it, and will have it, whether it likes or no, in their jars, that they may measure its quantity and its quality, and write both down in their journals. It is thus that electricity comes down the wires into those jars on our right as we enter. If very slight, its presence there is indicated by tiny morsels of pendent gold-leaf; if stronger, the divergence of two straws show it; if stronger still, the third jar holds its greater force, while neighboring instruments measure the length of the electric sparks, or mark the amount of the electric force. At the desk, close by, sits the observer, who jots down the successive indications. In his book he registers from day to day, throughout the year, how much electricity has been in the air, and what was its character, even to such particulars as to whether its sparks were blue, violet, or purple in color. At times, however, he has to exercise great care, and it is not always that he even then escapes receiving severe shocks.
Passing on, we approach the magnets. They are three in number; of large size, and differently suspended, to show the various ways in which such bodies are acted upon. All hang by bands of unwrought silk. If the silk were twisted, it would twist the magnets, and the accuracy of their position would be disturbed. Magnets, like telescopes, must be true in their adjustment to the hundredth part of a hair's breadth. One magnet hangs north and south; another east and west; and a third, like a scale-beam, is balanced on knife-edges and agate planes, so beautifully, that when once adjusted and inclosed in its case, it is opened only once a year, lest one grain of dust, or one small spider, should destroy its truth; for spiders are as troublesome to the weather-student as to the astronomer. These insects like the perfect quiet that reigns about the instruments of the philosopher, and with heroic perseverance persist in spinning their fine threads among his machines. Indeed, spiders occasionally betray the magnetic observer into very odd behavior At times he may be seen bowing in the sunshine, like a Persian fire-worshiper; now stooping in this direction, now dodging in that, but always gazing through the sun's rays up toward that luminary. He seems demented, staring at nothing. At last he lifts his hand; he snatches apparently at vacancy to pull nothing down In truth his eye had at last caught the gleam of light reflected from an almost invisible spider line running from the electrical wire to the neighboring planks. The spider who had ventured on the charged wire paid the penalty of such daring with his life long ago, but he had left his web behind him, and that beautifully minute thread has been carrying off to the earth a portion of the electric fluid, before it had been received, and tested, and registered by the mechanism below. Such facts show the exceeding delicacy of the observations.
For seven years, the magnets suspended in this building were constantly watched every two hours—every even hour—day and night, except on Sundays, the object being that some light might be thrown upon the laws regulating the movements of the mariner's compass; hence, that while men became wiser, navigation might be rendered safer. The chief observer—the genius loci—is Mr. Glaisher, whose name figures in the reports of the Register-General. He, with two assistants, from year to year, went on making these tedious examinations of the variations of the magnets, by means of small telescopes, fixed with great precision upon pedestals of masonry or wood fixed on the earth, and unconnected with the floor of the building, occupying a position exactly between the three magnets. This mode of proceeding had continued for some years with almost unerring regularity, and certain large quarto volumes full of figures were the results, when an ingenious medical man, Mr. Brooke, hit upon a photographic plan for removing the necessity for this perpetual watchfulness. Now, in the magnet-house, we see light and chemistry doing the tasks before performed by human labor; and doing them more faithfully than even the most vigilant of human eyes and hands. Around the magnets are cases of zinc, so perfect that they exclude all light from without. Inside those cases, in one place, is a lamp giving a single ray of prepared light, which, falling upon a mirror soldered to the magnet, moves with its motions. This wandering ray, directed toward a sheet of sensitive photographic paper, records the magnet's slightest motion! The paper moves on by clock-work, and once in four-and-twenty hours an assistant, having closed the shutters of the building, lights a lantern of yellow glass, opens the magnet-boxes, removes the paper on which the magnets have been enabled to record their own motions, and then, having put in a fresh sheet of sensitive paper, he shuts it securely in, winds up the clock-work, puts out his yellow light, and lets in the sunshine. His lantern glass is yellow, because the yellow rays are the only ones which can be safely allowed to fall upon the photographic paper during its removal from the instrument, to the dish in which its magnetic picture is to be fixed by a further chemical process. It is the blue ray of the light that gives the daguerrotypic likeness—as most persons who have had their heads off, under the hands of M. Claudet, or Mr. Beard, or any of their numerous competitors in the art of preparing sun-pictures, well know.
Since the apparatus of Mr. Brooke for the self-registration of the magnetic changes has been in operation at Greenwich, the time of Mr. Glaisher and his assistants has been more at liberty for other branches of their duties. These are numerous enough. Thermometers and barometers have to be watched as well as magnets. To these instruments the same ingenious photographic contrivance is applied.
The wooden building next to the magnet-house on the southwest contains a modification of Mr. Brooke's ingenious plan, by which the rise and fall of the temperature of the air is self-registered. Outside the building are the bulbs of thermometers freely exposed to the weather. Their shafts run through a zinc case, and as the mercury rises or falls, it moves a float having a projecting arm. Across this arm is thrown the ray of prepared light which falls then upon the sensitive paper. Thus we see the variations of the needle and the variations in heat and cold both recording their own story, within these humble-looking wooden sheds, as completely as the wind and the rain are made to do the same thing, on the top of the towers of the Observatory. The reward given to the inventor of this ingenious mode of self-registration has been recently revealed in a parliamentary paper, thus: "To Mr. Charles Brooke for his invention and establishment at the Royal Observatory, of the apparatus for the self-registration of magnetical and meteorological phenomena, £500." Every year the invention will save fully £500 worth of human toil; and the reward seems small when we see every year millions voted for warlike, sinecure, and other worse than useless purposes.
Photography, however, can not do all the work. Its records have to be cheeked by independent observations every day, and then both have to be brought to their practical value by comparison with certain tables which test their accuracy, and make them available for disclosing certain scientific results. The preparation of such tables is one of the practical triumphs of Greenwich. Many a quiet country gentleman amuses his leisure by noting day by day the variations of his thermometer and barometer. Heretofore such observations were isolated and of no general value, but now, by the tables completed by Mr. Glaisher, and published by the Royal Society, they may all be converted into scientific values, and be made available for the increase of our weather-wisdom. For nearly seventy years the Royal Society had observations made at Somerset House, but they were a dead letter—mere long columns of figures—till these tables gave them significance. And the same tables now knit into one scientific whole, the observations taken by forty scientific volunteers, who, from day to day, record for the Registrar-General of births and deaths, the temperature, moisture, &c., of their different localities, which vary from Glasgow to Guernsey, and from Cornwall to Norwich.
What the Rosetta stone is to the history of the Pharaohs, these Greenwich tables have been to the weather-hieroglyphics. They have afforded something like a key to the language in which the secrets are written; and it remains for industrious observation and scientific zeal to complete the modern victory over ancient ignorance. Already the results of the Greenwich studies of the weather have given us a number of curious morsels of knowledge. The wholesale destruction of human life induced by a fall in the temperature of London has just been noticed. Besides the manifestation of that fact, we are shown, that instead of a warm summer being followed by a cold winter, the tendency of the law of the weather is to group warm seasons together, and cold seasons together. Mr. Glaisher has made out, that the character of the weather seems to follow certain curves, so to speak, each extending over periods of fifteen years. During the first half of each of these periods, the seasons become warmer and warmer, till they reach their warmest point, and then they sink again, becoming colder and colder, till they reach the lowest point, whence they rise again. His tables range over the last seventy-nine years—from 1771 to 1849. Periods shown to be the coldest, were years memorable for high-priced food, increased mortality, popular discontent, and political changes. In his diagrams, the warm years are tinted brown, and the cold years gray, and as the sheets are turned over and the dates scanned, the fact suggest itself that a gray period saw Lord George Gordon's riots; a gray period was marked by the Reform Bill excitement; and a gray period saw the Corn Laws repealed.
A few more morsels culled from the experience of these weather-seers, and we have done.
Those seasons have been best which have enjoyed an average temperature—not too hot nor too cold.
The indications are that the climate of England is becoming warmer, and, consequently, healthier; a fact to be partly accounted for by the improved drainage and the removal of an excess of timber from the land.
The intensity of cholera was found greatest in those places where the air was stagnant; and, therefore, any means for causing its motion, as lighting fires and improving ventilation, are thus proved to be of the utmost consequence.
Some day near the 20th of January—the lucky guess, in 1838, of Murphy's Weather Almanac—will, upon the average of years, be found to be the coldest of the whole year.
In the middle of May there are generally some days of cold, so severe as to be unexplainable. Humboldt mentions this fact in his Cosmos; and various authors have tried to account for it—at present in vain. The favorite notion, perhaps, is that which attributes this period of cold to the loosening of the icebergs of the north. Another weather eccentricity is the usual advent of some warm days at the beginning of November.
Certain experiments in progress to test the difference between the temperature of the Thames, and of the surrounding atmosphere, are expected to show the cause of the famous London fog. During the night the Thames is often from ten to seventeen degrees warmer, and in the day time from eight to ten degrees colder than the air above it.
If the theory of weather-cycles holds good, we are to have seasons colder than the average from this time till 1853, when warmth will begin again to predominate over cold. A chilly prophecy this to close with, and therefore, rather let an anecdote complete this chapter on the Weather-Watchers of Greenwich.
Among other experiments going on some time ago in the observatory inclosure, were some by which Mr. Glaisher sought to discover how much warmth the earth lost during the hours of night, and how much moisture the air would take up in a day from a given surface. Upon the long grass, within the dwarf fence already mentioned were placed all sorts of odd substances, in little distinct qualities. Ashes wood, leather, linen, cotton, glass, lead, copper and stone, among other things, were there to show how each affected the question of radiation. Close by upon a post was a dish six inches across, in which every day there was punctually poured one ounce of water, and at the same hour next day, as punctually was this fluid remeasured to see what had been lost by evaporation. For three years this latter experiment had been going on, and the results were posted up in a book; but the figures gave most contradictory results. There was either something very irregular in the air, or something very wrong in the apparatus. It was watched for leakage, but none was found, when one day Mr. Glaisher stepped out of the magnet-house, and looking toward the stand, the mystery was revealed. The evaporating dish of the philosopher was being used as a bath by an irreverent bird! a sparrow was scattering from his wings the water left to be drunk by the winds of Heaven. Only one thing remained to be done; and the next minute saw a pen run through the tables that had taken three years to compile. The labor was lost—the work had to be begun again.